Located 500 yards southeast, Bluffton was incorporated in 1888 and promoted as a future iron center of the South because of large iron ore deposits and four furnaces within a four mile radius. The town soon boomed with an influx of capital from Northern investors, and its population reached an estimated 8,000 residents. Bluffton had the first electric lights in the county, a large Victorian hotel called The Signal, more than 20 businesses, and plans for a large college, the University of the Southland, that never materialized.